Computer titans clash in Abu Dhabi

8/14/2004 – This could be the highest level of computer chess ever played –
and you can watch it unfold live on Playchess.com.
An eight-game match between multiple world champion Shredder, running on a
superfast four-processor system, and Hydra, a Deep Blue style hardware program
running on a 16-way Linux cluster. Here are all the details...

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14th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival

The 14th Abu Dhabi Chess Festival 2003 is being held from Saturday, August
14th until Tuesday, August 24, 2004. The venue is Abu Dhabi or Abu Zaby (Arabic
language: أبوظبي) is the capital city of
the emirate of the same name in north central United Arab Emirates. The population
is about one million, with about 80% expatriate. It is also the capital of
the UAE, and a seaport on the Persian Gulf. Abu Dhabi is just 120 km from Dubai,
were the FIDE president is planning to build a $2.6
billion chess city.

The city skyline of Abu Dhabi

The beach front with the Abu Dhabi Intercontinental Hotel

The
14th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival is one of the most prestigious
events in the Persian Gulf region. The venue is the Cultural Foundation in Abu
Dhabi (picture on the left), in the heart of the city. The organizers are the
Cultural Foundation & Abu Dhabi Chess & Culture club with full technical
and administrational supervision.

Festival events:

b) Open Tournament: men + under 16, 9 round Swiss system,
90 minutes for entire game. Total Prizes: More than 11,000 UAE Dhs.

c) Children Tournament: open for children under 12 years
old, 7 rounds Swiss system, time limit is 60 minutes for each player with unlimited
moves. Prizes 2,300 UAE Dhs

d) Blitz tournament: open for all rated and unrated players.
Total prizes 3,500 UAE Dhs.

The official hotel is the Khalidia
Palace Hotel, situated 35 kms from Abu Dhabi International Airport, and
just 5 kms from the heart of the city. The hotel has 120 rooms, suites and
private beach Chalets, fully equipped with all amenities that you expect from
a five star hotel. Prices are $45 for a single and $70 for a double ($96 for
triple occupancy). Contact: Tel: 00971-2-6662470, Fax: 00971-2-6660411, Email:
kphauh@emirates.net.ae.

Clash of the Computer Titans

One of the most exciting events in the chess festival is the computer challenge,
which pits two of the world's most powerful chess playing programs against
each other. The many-times world champion Shredder
will take on Hydra,
a Deep Blue style hardware program which was originally developed by ChessBase
and is now being maintained by the Pal Group of Companies in Abu Dhabi.

Live coverage

There will be live coverage directly from the tournament hall on the Playchess.com
server. You can use Fritz or any Fritz-compatible program (Shredder,
Junior, Tiger, Hiarcs) to follow the games, or download a free
trial client. The broadcast of the games will be available in the Broadcast
room.

Who will win?

Any speculations regarding the chances of both sides in this titanic computer
clash, and especially the question of who will won, are quickly answered.

Obviously Shredder will win. Just take a look at the world championship title
this program has secured:

Jakarta 1996: World micro-computer chess champion

Paderborn 1999: Computer chess world champion!

London 2000: World micro-computer chess champion

Maastricht 2001: World micro-computer chess champion

Maastricht 2002: blitz world champion

Graz 2003: Computer Chess World Champion and blitz world champion.

We cannot even begin to count the successes in other computer tournaments.
Apart from that the latest version of Shredder has been under development and
improvement by author Stefan Meyer-Kahlen for over a year now, so that we will
see a new, even stronger program playing in Abu Dhabi. And it will be running
on the fastest hardware available for normal mortals at the current time. It
is a Quad-Opteron server, with four processors at a speed of over 2 GHz apiece.
The system has enough memory to satisfy any program. Shredder will be generating
and evaluating almost two million positions per second (normally it runs at
half a million positions on a 3.x GHz Pentium 4). And finally the openings
book is developed by one of the most experienced authors in the business, the
Italian computer chess expert Sandro Necci. How could any program reasonably
expect to beat this team?

On the other hand...

Hydra is a hardware program, based on FPGA technology. It was developed by
the Austrian mathematician Dr Christian ("Chrilly") Donninger, who
worked with leading experts in the field to produce the Brutus
program. In the match in Abu Dhabi a multi-processor version of Brutus,
called Hydra, will be running on a 16-way Linux cluster, in which each node
is a 3.06 Xeon processor. The host system holds 16 FPGA Virtex I cards. The
cluster resides in the server room of Pal Group of companies in Abu Dhabi.
Author Chrilly Donninger will access it from the tournament hall using an Internet
connection.

In addition to the awesome hardware, the Hydra team is also very impressive.
It consists of Donninger, the chess code programmer; Dr. Ulf Lorenz, a researcher
at the University of Paderborn, Germany, who is in charge of testing and machine
issues; Mohammed Nasir Ali, the Project Manager of Hydra, who has a background
in computer science and parallel computing; and the two grandmasters Christopher
Lutz, who was German Champion in 1995 and 2001, a member of the German national
team for 12 years; and Talib Mousa, the first and only GM from UAE, who is
known for his strong analytical and tactical approach to chess. Both GMs advise
the programmers and test new versions in an effort to improve the chess understanding
of Hydra; and they program the openings book with the latest chess theory,
making sure that Hydra strives for positions it understands and plays well.

So the question arises: who can reasonably expect to beat the Hydra system?
Shredder? It's an irresistible force meeting an irresistible force, with billions
of deep calculations flying across the hall. Certainly a very interesting chess
match, in our opinion far too close to call.

See also

3/27/2018 – Sergey Karjkin didn't succeed in posing serious problems for Ding Liren and after, what he called, a "terrible blunder", he had to scramble to save a draw. That left Caruana in great shape to win the tournament. Mamedyarov struggled to find winning chances with black against Kramnik, but in the end that game ended drawn as well. Caruana, needing only a draw, was in command against Grischuk and even won the game to finish in clear first by a full point! | Photo and drawings by World Chess

See also

1/28/2018 – Magnus Carlsen won the 80th Tata Steel Masters which was decided in a blitz tiebreak over Dutch number one Anish Giri. The players contested two blitz games with 5 minutes plus 3 seconds per move, with no sudden death Armageddon game needed. Vidit played solidly to earn a draw that was enough to win the Challengers, as Korobov could not manage to pull off a win with black on-demand. | Photo: Alina l'Ami TataSteelChess.com

Video

The setup for White recommended by Valeri Lilov is solid and easy to play – the thematic moves are almost always the same ones: Nge2, 0-0, Bg5 (or Be3), Nd5, Qd2. Later, according to Black’s setup, things continue with f4 or even Rac1, b4 and play on the queenside. Starting with the classic Botvinnik-Spassky, Leiden 1970, the author describes this universally employable setup in 7 videos (+ intro and conclusion).